HR in the City

It is not all play we have been doing some work honest!!!

I spent yesterday morning in the HR office at City Hall in Calgary. George McLauchlan the head of HR had kindly set me up ( I guess it was really Sheila that set it up thanks) with 30 min slots with some of his management team.

I spent half an hour with each and started with Mary Lou Flood we chatted about pay, benefits, job evaluation and pensions a lot to squeeze into 30mins. I then spoke to Cindy Munn she looked after recruitment and staffing. This had been quite a challenge as the booming economy a couple of years ago had led to real challenges in recruitment, unemployment rates in the city were 3% (these were the real duffers who couldn't get a job anyway). Cindy had even been over to the UK to attract talent.

Next on my list was Bill Oakes who had a remit for workforce planning. This role was quite important over here as the city is quite dynamic and is still growing quite rapidly. Thing are done in a similar way. Additional points of interest were how they measure effectiveness of workforce planning and bringing in knowledge transfer to their planning, it was a good idea but an expensive luxury.

I then had a discussion with Gillian Gibbs-Gray she looked after policy and process. There is a lot less employment legislation over here so not so much policy but the lay out and approval process is very similar to what we do. Similarly the same techniques are used for policy role out.

My final meeting was with Joan Kennedy and we had a chat about succession planning. Like ourselves there is no list of the chosen ones. They try to ensure that the right skills and qualifications are in place so that they can grow their own. I like the HR strategy it is simple enough for me to understand (get em - keep em - grow em) i think em is Canadian for employee!

It was getting near lunch time and I had to vacate my temporary office at city hall (the board room). George took me to flame central for lunch with Gillian and Sheila. For those back home the flames are the hockey team in town and it was match day how exciting.

In the afternoon I met Carol & Julia we had a chat about recruitment and training and got a feel for how HR in the private sector works.

Sheila said to me if I am thinking of working over here I should look them up, funnily enough some of the experienced staff must be over 50 there maybe some opportunities round the corner.

Bye for now.

Wallace.